1. World at Work Article – July 11, 2016
Your article wasfinallypublishedbyWorldAtWork! Here itis:
https://www.worldatwork.org/adimComment?id=80480&utm_source=Direct&utm_medium=eNewslett
er&utm_term=cf_editorial3&utm_content=Articles&utm_campaign=ED_BWLF2916
Empowering Nutrition: The Key to a Successful Workplace Wellness Program
By Dale Rayman, Zipongo | July 2016
The facts are troubling: More than 2 in 3 Americans are overweight or obese. Unless something changes,
52% of Americans will have diabetes or prediabetes by 2020, according to the UnitedHealth Center for
Health Reform and Modernization.
Employers, who bear the brunt of the costs when employees are hospitalized or miss work due to chronic
illness, want to keep that from happening. That's why most large employers in the United States have
turned to workplace wellness programs to help employees get and stay healthy. Unfortunately, the
majority of these programs have not had much success in slowing the obesity trend. Nor have most
programs lived up to their promise of delivering a financial ROI. Research indicates that many programs
barely break even.
A major driver behind these failures is thatthese programs don'tfocus enough on the mostimportantingredientin
wellness — food. Many wellness programs investmuch more in fitness,stress reduction and tobacco cessation than
in improving nutrition.Yet, evidence shows thatpoor nutrition has a significantlygreater impacton health status.In
fact, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that dietary risks have almostthree
times the impacton both mortality and disabilityas low or no physical activity.
Perhaps the reason wellness programs give food shortshriftis the fact that getting people to change their eating
behaviors is hard.Traditional approaches to improving nutrition — making individuals order special foods,go on diets
or track what they eat — haven't worked. Telling people to eat more vegetables and fruits and less sugar and fatisn't
adequate.Outlining the consequences ofobesityhasn'tdone the trick either.
How then are wellness programs expected to move the needle on nutrition? The key lies in helping employees
navigate the complexfactors surrounding their food choices.
Empowering Individuals to Make Healthy Food Choices
Eating nutritiouslyin our current ecosystem is challenging. Firstofall, people are surrounded byfast-food chains,
junk-food manufacturers,price promotions and clever marketing campaigns.The food industry bombards us with
advertising of high-sugar,high-calorie foods and beverages (more is spenton promoting these than healthyfoods).
Today's portion sizes are also much larger than in the past,points out another JAMA article. Choosing to eathealthy
is further complicated bythe fact that it isn'teasy to selectthe right balance offiber, carbs,fats, sugar,vitamins and
sodium.A busylifestyle makes such calculations especiallydifficult.

2. People also mustcontend with social factors.They want to go out to restaurants with friends and family.They want to
eat in companycafeterias with co-workers.When they're home,they wantthe option of cooking or ordering in. They
don't want nutrition plans thatrestrictthose choices.
Employees need a solution thatmakes iteasy to eat healthy. They need something thattakes into account the
complexsocial factors that surround their eating decisions.They need experts doing the hard work behind the scenes
— linking to grocery-store chains,to tens of thousands ofrestaurants across the country and to food-service vendors
in companycafeterias — to make sense ofthe nutritional contentof meals.Theyneed to know the healthier choices
that surround them,whether they are at home,at work or on the go. And they need all of this information
personalized to match their dietary needs (whether vegetarian,vegan, pescatarian or paleo),their health status
(diabetic,hypertensive, etc.) and their allergies.
At long last,a few vendors that can tie this together have come forward,marrying the latestin digital technologywith
evidence-based personalized solutions to pointemployees to healthy choices wherever they choose to go.
Companies are bringing to Android and iOS devices simple solutions thatnavigate the complex maze of food choices
to make eating well simple for each person.Armed with such solutions,individuals are no longer required to become
experts to navigate the nutritional landmines thatsurround them.Empowered in this way, they have the tools they
need to put the brakes on the obesitytrend.
Equipping employees with nutritional tools has become even more essential in 2016.Effective Jan. 1, the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) began requiring employers to cover (for free) nutrition-related
preventive services for employees who are obese or overweightand have cardiovascular risk factors.In other words,
employers mustmake free nutritional counseling available for roughlyhalftheir adultpopulation.
Successful employers will be those thatadoptinnovative digital solutions to address these new regulatory
requirements.Instead ofviewing the regulation as a compliance or costburden,they will approach it as an
opportunity to invest in their human capital through proven nutrition improvement.In the end, wis e employers can
more than offset the costof such interventions with savings in health-care dollars and improved productivity.
About the Author
Dale Rayman is vice presidentof analytics and chief actuary of Zipongo,a San Francisco digital nutrition company.